Configure This!

6:00 PM -- CMDB is pie in the sky as far as at least one provider of storage resource management software is concerned.

Onaro Inc. sent a late response to an inquiry for our recent story on the emergence of configuration resource databases. (See Storage Left Out of CMDB Loop.)

According to Onaro's VP of marketing, Bryan Semple, "The concept of CMDB is an interesting one and we are supportive of the effort. But the industry is a long way off from having anything useful. CMDB is very much a big-framework, boil-the-ocean approach."

Onaro was the first storage software maker to specialize in configuration management, even though the firm has since expanded its charter. (See Onaro Adds New Storage Views.) According to Semple, the vendor's SANscreen product does a lot of what CMDB is supposed to do: "Were collecting accurate storage data and holding change elements, relationships, mapping of applications, servers and their data resources for many fortune 500 companies," he writes in an email. "We dont consider ourselves a CMDB company, but we do have the elements of it in the networked storage environment."

Semple will believe CMDB has arrived when it's on his doorstep. "If we come across customers with operational CMDBs -- we can use the data from this source. But quite frankly, we have not come across this. Lots of projects and talk and standards, but very few functioning systems."